The role of mobile navigation in tourists’ hotel choice: A scenario-based intertemporal decision-making model

In the digital era, mobile navigation, as a key location-based service, is playing an increasingly vital role in shaping tourists’ spatial decision-making, hotel selection, and overall travel experiences. This study employed a stated choice experiment and developed a scenario-based intertemporal mixed logit model to accurately model tourists’ hotel choice decisions before and after the widespread use of mobile navigation. Empirical results reveal that tourists prioritized service quality and hardware facilities before the widespread use of mobile navigation. After the adoption of mobile navigation, their focus shifted towards traffic accessibility, while the importance of location decreased. In navigation scenarios, tourists exhibited reference dependence and loss aversion, with the attributes of hotels they previously stayed at becoming future reference points. They were less tolerant of declines in hotel attributes, and mobile navigation helped alleviate concerns about hotels in suboptimal locations. Additionally, tourists with strong counterfactual thinking displayed distinct preference structures across different scenarios. From the perspective of the “human-technology-space” interaction, this study expands the theoretical framework of tourists’ spatial decision-making under the influence of navigation. The developed model provides more reliable estimates and explanatory power for understanding tourist choice behavior from a micro-level perspective.